Tagged: Address Book

iCal and Address Book: Apple Support Communities

Address Book (application)
Image via Wikipedia

People hate the interface for the above two programs. I don’t blame them. I don’t use those applications, but if I did I would use kurosawa99 suggestion below.

Matthias Eckardt’s free, “LionBleacher” helps some. At least it eliminates the horrible “Leather” metaphor.

via iCal and Address Book: Apple Support Communities.

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Moving/disappearing icons in the Dock

Image representing MobileMe as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

Turns out it has to do with MobileMe and out of control synchronization.  Here is Damien-007 solution.

I solved this problem a few days ago, after spending close to two hours with Apple Care. All time very well spent since I learned a lot, but more importantly, I thoroughly solved the problem.

Mind you, this was happening to me on my three different computers, 2 iMacs and a Mac Mini, all under 10.6.4
And through solving this problem, I learned that MobilMe also had a sync file on a Windows XP and a Windows 7 machine, neither of which I had booted up, since last spring.

First, the symptoms:
1) your dock changes the icon content before your eyes
2) the dock won’t hold an icon in its place, no matter how you put it there, or what settings or methods you choose to ‘Keep In Dock’
3) you are currently, or have previously used MobileMe, to sync your settings

The cause of these symptoms/problem:
Your MobileMe syncing with the cloud (the Apple servers where they store your sync data and your sync settings) has been corrupted.

Why unchecking Synchronize with MobileMe doesn’t fix it:
Because even on your local machine, the dock is “calling home” to verify it’s settings. When you turn off syncing, it’s inability to call the cloud, continues the problem.

The only guaranteed solution:
You have to Unregister all computer(s) from the MobileMe cloud and start your MobileMe sync fresh (as in brand new settings, NOT Reset settings) on all your computer(s). This applies even if you only sync one computer, and even if you have turned off syncing with MobileMe.

Before beginning, Turn off Synchronize with MobileMe on all computers in your MobileMe cloud.

The steps:
1) Backup everything and take note of all your settings, for which MobileMe has syncing powers over. Specifically, this includes, Bookmarks, iCal, Address Book, Mail Accounts, Mail Rules, Notes, Preferences and Entourage Notes. For Keychains, make sure you scrub that list and delete duplicates. A symptom of corrupt syncing is multiple entries in your key-chain for the same passwords. It’s OK to over delete here since the worst case scenario is you will have to reenter passwords

2) Now you will erase all the data in the MobileMe cloud, 100%.
Go to the Apple (top left corner)/System Preferences/MobileMe/Sync

  • click the Advanced button lower right
  • click on each computer listed in the pull down window
  • to the right of each computer listed, click Stop Syncing Computer
  • if you have multiple computers (I had five), each stop will take some time and may produce the beach ball. Be patient and hang in there. Still, all 5 of my computers, only to me about 20 minutes total.
  • After the last or ONLY computer has been thoroughly “stopped syncing”,

a NEW pull down window will drop down, listing all the data that lives in the MobileMe cloud

  • check mark each file and confirm that you want all that data/entries deleted.

3) Now you need to set up a new dock:

  • Delete the dock preferences and database files mentioned by macjack above

“Go to /Users/yourname/Library/Preferences and delete these 2 files /com.apple.dock.plist and com.apple.dock.db.plist Then restart. This will give you the default Dock, so you’ll have to reset yours the way you like.”

Also, make sure your entire computer data is as you expect it. Address Book, iCal etc. Restore from backups if necessary and basically get your Mac to the way you like it.

NOW,
You can set up MobileMe fresh BUT this time do it with the more Advanced method by going back to the Advance Button under
Go to the Apple (top left corner)/System Preferences/MobileMe/Sync

  • click the Advanced button lower right

And Register your/each computer: This will automatically start a MobileMe sync.

When asked, tell MobileMe that you want to keep the data on your freshly set up computer and replace the data on Mobile me.

You are done.

Do the above for each computer, for which you use mobileMe with the one variation that you should replace the data on each successive computer, with the sync data on the MobileMe cloud. (after your primary/main computer has thoroughly populated the New MobilMe data in the cloud.

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How to create a smart group for contacts that have iPhone.

Apple – Support – Discussions – address book smart groups ….  Joaisey has a nice Applescript that does this.  Great work!  This is a huge help for anyone who has Facetime.

– Add iPhone Tag –
– John Maisey – www.nhoj.co.uk – 7 Dec 2010 – v1
tell application “Address Book”
set myPeople to people whose label of phones contains “iPhone”
repeat with thisPerson in myPeople
set myNote to note of thisPerson
if myNote is equal to missing value then
set myNote to “has_iphone”
else if myNote does not contain “has_iphone” then
set note of thisPerson to note of thisPerson & return & “has_iphone”
end if
end repeat
save
end tell

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AutoFill Username and Password Question …

Image via Wikipedia

Beth_M figured it out.

I finally got it all to reset.Cleared all the autofill, then recleared the history, cookies, and cache. Rebooted. This time it once again asked if I wanted to save the username and pw. Voila..Thanks much

via Apple – Support – Discussions – AutoFill Username and Password Question ….

 

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How do you create a mailing list on the Mac?

Apple – Support – Discussions – How do you create a mailing list? ….  J D McIninch has the answer.

n Address Book, note the “Group” panel on the left.

You can create a group by clicking on the “+” on the bottom of the panel, and populate it by dragging cards of people in the address book into the group.

You can also create a group in Address Book form the File menu, which gives you options to create a group, and “New Group From Selection” which is handy if you’ve selected a number of cards in your contact list.

Finally, there’s my personal favorite, “File > New Smart Group”. This is excellent because it permits you to create a group that’s made of cards meeting criteria that you specify. If you add a new card with the specified criteria, it’s part of the group. One thing you could do is create a group of people that, for example, live in your hometown… However, I’ve found it immensely useful to select cards based on a word or phrase in the note field (e.g., I have a smart group called Christmas Card that contains all people with the phrase “xmas card” in the note field). You can also make groups like “everyone that’s got a birthday in the next week” and so on.

If you want to send e-mail to a whole group, simply type the group name in the To:, Cc: or Bcc: fields in Mail. You’ll notice that as you type, the group name will appear in a drop down and you can select it. When you do, the group name will be replaced with all the individuals in the list.

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Sharing address book between computers …

Image representing Dropbox as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Apple – Support – Discussions – Sharing address book between computers ….  Several ways to accomplish this.  Some cost as much as $50 and some are free.  I like Mr. Louis Dropbox solution.

Dropbox gives us away to do this for free. I got this from an article in Wired Magazine, I have this setup running on my two Mac Mini‘s in my house and it works well.

Sync your Address Book on two Macs
Step 1
Download and install the Dropbox app, and back up your Mac‘s Address Book
(go to File > Export > Address Book archive). To begin, open your Mac’s Terminal utility.
Enter this command:
mv ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook ~/Dropbox/
to move your Address Book data to Dropbox.
Note: The backwards slash after the word “Application” is the way spaces in folder and file names must be represented in the Terminal app. By putting a backslash before each space, Terminal knows you’re really looking for the folder named “Application Support.”

Step 2
On a new line, type
ln -s ~/Dropbox/AddressBook/ ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook
to redirect your Mac to Dropbox whenever it tries to access Address Book data.

Step 3
On your second Mac, go into your User Library and delete the Address Book file
(it’s in the same place it was on your first Mac, in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook).
Then, open Terminal and re-enter the code from step 2. The two Macs should be linked!

You can repeat Step 3 on additional Macs if needed.

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